


Spring is the New Beginning

by sungyeols



Category: Infinite (Band)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Mental Disorders, Mild Hurt/Comfort, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-04
Updated: 2017-04-04
Packaged: 2018-10-14 18:46:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10542354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sungyeols/pseuds/sungyeols
Summary: This Sungyeol is different from the Sungyeol he first saw months back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is something quick and easy that I whipped up in under 3 hours, I just really couldn't get the idea out of my head. It's inspired by a post I saw on tumblr (I would link it, but I need to find it first) and I.O.I's 벚꽃이 지면 (When The Cherry Blossoms Fade).

He meets a guy named Lee Sungyeol in the beginning of summer.

He’s somewhere around 15, awkward and quietly sweating under the summer heat. Sungyeol was 18 and he moved next door along with his parents and younger brother. He was tall and lanky, fats sticking out in his cheeks and his half eyebrows sit prominently in his face. He’s got brown shaggy hair, and he wasn’t that pretty in Myungsoo’s opinion. To say he was loud was an understatement. He never stopped talking about stuff and complained a lot, he finds out from his mom. He barely stayed at home and Myungsoo always saw him hanging out downtown, where the dubious kids usually stick around. Sungyeol doesn’t talk to him despite doing so with every other person in the small town they live in. Myungsoo isn’t really fond of speaking, and he prefers watching.

During the summer he loved going to the community swimming pool with Moonsoo, his younger brother. They would go there riding their bikes and jumping headfirst in the pool, soaking up in all the chlorine to relieve the summer heat. Halfway the summer, Sungyeol begins appearing in the community swimming pool. Apparently, he’s the new summer lifeguard. His mom probably forced him to do it instead of associating himself with the trouble making kids Myungsoo loves avoiding.  Myungsoo didn’t mind him as he swims to the deeper part of the pool and Sungyeol blows his whistle to a kid that began a fight in the middle of the other pool (since there were 2). Myungsoo watches Sungyeol fret around the kids running at the slippery side of the pool and yell at teens who try to make trouble there.

Myungsoo can’t help it, but he keeps on noticing the trickling sweat on Sungyeol’s forehead, racing down to his long neck and tank top donning torso when he sits beside the poolside after scolding a teenager who pushed his friend in the pool despite warnings. Sungyeol finds him staring but did not pay attention much, shifting his eyes to the other side.  

When fall came and school started, Sungyeol was more subdued.

Myungsoo sees him in school during the first day. Myungsoo originally thought Sungyeol was going to college already, but apparently he had to repeat a grade. Myungsoo overheard it from one of his girl classmates who are already gushing about the new guy.

Their town was small and it was about time most of the youngins found out about the mystery man.

Rumors circulate, that Sungyeol was a problematic student, that he pushed drugs, that he assaulted someone with a hidden blade in his wallet that’s why they had to move to this town and start anew--different stories that Myungsoo knows were solely made for entertainment of the majority.

His first conversation with Sungyeol actually happens a week after school began. It’s windy, and Myungsoo is walking back home. He couldn’t ride his bike back home because the tire was flat and he hadn’t gotten the chance to have it fixed. There were footsteps approaching, and before Myungsoo could turn around he sees that it’s Sungyeol.

“Walk with me.” the older male says before Myungsoo could even exhale.

Myungsoo tries a conversation starter. They’ve already passed two streets before he finally asks.

_“Why?”_

“I’m trying if they wouldn’t bother me if I was with you.”

Myungsoo wants to ask why again, but he decides not to. It’s true that no one bothers with him. He’s quiet and they find him weird when he ends up staring at blank spaces, and he’s not also welcoming of other people. But really, no one just tried to.

Until Sungyeol.

Myungsoo doesn’t question Sungyeol’s daily appearance on his walks back home. Sungyeol talks to him and asks him things, and he replies curtly.

What’s your favorite color? _Black._

What’s your favorite genre of music? _Anime OSTs._

What’s your favorite movie? _Kingsman, and The Notebook._

What’s your favorite food? _Kimchi Jjigae and Udon._

Myungsoo doesn’t ask him a question. It’s not that he isn’t curious. He just isn’t sure how to ask him.

This Sungyeol is different from the Sungyeol he first saw months back. His usual brown shaggy hair is now peppery red (he’s confused as to why the school allows this to be honest), and it’s swept nicely on his head despite its growing length. His half eyebrows are now full for some unknown reason and his eyes appear more calm and relaxed. He’s still talkative, but not as much and he’s got that laid back and resolved aura around him that Myungsoo wants to bask in. This Sungyeol doesn’t complain, and this Sungyeol keeps on prodding him to tell his most favorite anime. Myungsoo can’t admit that it’s those girly and sappy shoujo types, but Sungyeol still keeps on asking as if it's the world’s most important question. Myungsoo has never had an actual friend before, so this was new.

“I like you, even though most of the time it’s like talking to a wall.” Sungyeol tells him one afternoon where it surprisingly rained and they’re under some bus stop drying their uniforms because they both forgot their umbrella. He looks at the older male wide eyed, and Sungyeol is smiling at him. It’s the first time he’s seen him genuinely smile like that and it makes Myungsoo’s insides warm up despite his cold wet uniform sticking in his body.

Sungyeol has his birthday, and Myungsoo gives him a personalized t-shirt. Sungyeol ruffles his hair and wears the shirt for the rest of the day, even as he blew the candles in his birthday cake.

They become closer, to the point where he spends his afternoons to evenings in Sungyeol’s house--in Sungyeol’s room, listening to music and hitting each other with pillows or napping on the carpeted floor. It varies every time, and it’s the kind of constant change that Myungsoo begins to like. He finds a word for it. _Variety._

Myungsoo has come to accept sometime at this point that he likes Sungyeol too.

Sungyeol makes sure that is properly established when he kisses Myungsoo under the tree in the park, while it’s windy and there are leaves rustling almost everywhere. Myungsoo stood there like a plank, and Sungyeol laughed at him when he pulls back.

 _“I didn’t know how.”_ he tells him. Sungyeol chuckles and pulls him in an embrace.

“It doesn’t matter. You’ll learn when we keep doing it.”

_“Are we going to kiss again?”_

“If you want to.”

_“I want to. If it makes you smile more, then I want to. I like it when you smile.”_

“I like it when you smile too, Myungsoo.”

It was the best autumn of Myungsoo’s life.

Sooner than later the leaves from the trees have all changed and fallen, and the first snowfall says hello to their town.

Sungyeol doesn’t walk back home with him from school. In fact, he hasn’t seen him since the snow first began falling. It was weird, because the day before that, they even spent their time watching some dumb Youtube video and laughing about it. Now, the window in Sungyeol’s room is shut tightly, in contrast to the rest of the windows in their house.

No one has seen Sungyeol for a week now, even in school. Rumors begin to circulate again, and it’s not the good kind either. Myungsoo blocks them out and refuses to listen to them even though almost everyone is talking about it. No one bothers asking him about Sungyeol, and it’s for the best, because he doesn’t know what he will say either.

When Sungyeol returns to school, it’s like everyone stopped breathing.

He’s got hair that spills in his shoulders, and that’s not even the first thing that stands the most out of it. It’s silver, like the moonlight. Silver like a bullet, bright and shining silver like those expensive tea sets people usually give in weddings. His calm and relaxed eyes now look sad and dead, and he doesn’t talk to people. He doesn’t talk to Myungsoo. He looks like he doesn’t eat, and his skin clings to his bones. He sees him when they pass by each other in the hallway, but it's as if Myungsoo was a ghost in Sungyeol’s life.

He doesn’t cry, because he promised he would never. But there are nights where he peers from his window and sees Sungyeol coming home at 1 in the morning, minimal clothing on outside a very snowy neighborhood, alone and visibly drunk. He wants to go there and hug him and beg him to talk to him again while they warm up Sungyeol’s visibly shaking frame from the cold. Myungsoo doesn’t do it. He couldn’t find the courage to do it, so he stands there holding the curtain staring at Sungyeol fumble for the keys in the front door.

He wonders if it was him, if he said something or did something that upset Sungyeol greatly. He looks in the mirror and looks at his overgrown hair and scrawny teenage body. He sits in his bedroom floor and wonder if it was his meek and quiet personality. Wonders if it was about anything at all. It leaves him with a headache that no pill can relieve, and a heartache no sleep can cure.

It’s like the longest winter of Myungsoo’s life.

It takes forever when it becomes spring. He spends his birthday with his family and no one asks about Sungyeol. No one talks about him either. Myungsoo can feel that they want to ask him about it but they don’t, which is why Myungsoo loves them. He receives black socks with cat prints on it from his brother, and his parents promise him money to buy what he wants. He ends up with a new grayish black cat a week later, and names him Byeol.

Byeol accompanies him in the transition nights, where it still feels like winter, but outside it’s actually spring.

It’s three weeks after his birthday that Sungyeol appears in front of their doorstep.

The first thing he notices is that the long silky silver hair is gone now, and was replaced with a strong jet black color.

“Are we still friends?” Sungyeol asks him.

Myungsoo is upset, and he demands answers and explanations and a lot of stuff from Sungyeol. But he does none of that, and launches himself on the older man, hugging and clinging to him tightly.

By the end of the day they’re still friends. So that’s nice.

They’re sitting on some bench in the park when Sungyeol tells him why he was distant and cold in the winter. Myungsoo takes it all in like a sponge. He finds out Sungyeol had sleepless nights, days where he feels like dying, and the obvious social withdrawal on top of many other things. Myungsoo hugs him when he’s done talking.

“You’re probably going to leave me now.”

_“I would never.”_

“I’m a lot to handle.”

 _“I’ve got big hands.”_ and he raises his right hand to Sungyeol. Sungyeol chuckles as he wipes his tears.

“I’m sorry I’m like this. I’m difficult, and overwhelming. It will be too much for you to handle.”

_“It won’t.”_

“Why do you say it like that? Like it’s easy?”

_“I’ve been through worse, I’m pretty sure I can handle you.”_

Sungyeol cries some more in his arms and they hug tightly.

When Myungsoo comes home, he researches online and reads everything about Sungyeol’s condition. It’s called Seasonal Affective Disorder, and there isn’t much information to work with. He reads stories from some people who have lived with someone who had it or people who actually suffered from it. By the time he’s done reading it’s already 3 in the morning.

Sungyeol during spring was as good as what he was in autumn. Maybe it was because they kissed more. Maybe it was because after months of not being with him, Sungyeol is now there, cuddling beside him in his bed on a rainy day. Maybe because it’s just Sungyeol.

Myungsoo’s just woken up from a nightmare in his nap when he feels a hand in his back, and it’s Sungyeol rubbing circles and continuously telling him _it’s just a dream, it’s okay._

He cries for the first time in front of Sungyeol, as his shaking hands tell him about the nightmare that never leaves him. The hellish nightmare when he was young that left him broken and voiceless. Sungyeol comforts him and tells him that it’s okay and that it wasn’t Myungsoo’s fault. When Myungsoo has calmed down now, he finally asks a question for the first time.

_“Did you know sign language before you met me?”_

Sungyeol smiles, eyes sparkling and full of light that Myungsoo thinks he can drown in them.

“No, I didn’t. It took me a whole summer to learn. When I found out, I began taking lessons so when the new school year begins, I can tell you to walk with me.”

Myungsoo cries again, and he knows he’s never going to love another person again as much as he loves Sungyeol at that moment, despite all his imperfections.

_“I love you.”_

“I love you too, Myungsoo.”

The rest of spring rolls in like a breeze, and Myungsoo spent it well with Sungyeol. Sungyeol is going to a community college ten minutes away from town in a few months time, and he’s making sure that before that happens he’s done everything he can for him.

It’s the end of spring that Sungyeol tells him he’s trying to get better, and Myungsoo hugs him tight and kisses him on the lips out of delight.

Their summer days are spent together, and Sungyeol returns as a lifeguard in the community swimming pool. Myungsoo knows Sungyeol needs more sunlight than anyone else in the entire planet, so he joins him there, frolicking in the pool splashing water in Sungyeol’s foot when he walks by. He gets out of the pool when his skin is all wrinkly and Sungyeol laughs at him because he looks like a prune. The days get hotter, even more than it was last summer now that Sungyeol is there in his life. Sungyeol under the sun, laughing while displaying his glistening teeth and lean body and moles in his collarbones. Sungyeol having more fun than he ever did when Myungsoo is there.

But then there are nights where Myungsoo has to hold the older man, sweating under the humid summer night, telling him everything is going to be okay as Sungyeol fights for air as he visibly shakes in panic. He doesn’t leave Sungyeol alone and makes sure he’s okay throughout all that. When Sungyeol has calmed down and relaxed, he leans in Myungsoo’s shoulder and they stay like that for minutes, what seems like hours.

Myungsoo knows he can’t actually tell Sungyeol how much he loves him despite his mental disorder, so he hopes his actions say it for him. How much he loves Sungyeol despite the moments where he never talked to him or acted like he was never a part of his life. How much he loves Sungyeol despite how he acted cold towards him. How much he loves Sungyeol that he’s willing to give his all, hoping that it will help Sungyeol.

When summer and autumn has passed and winter has rolled in, Myungsoo wakes up one snowy day to see Sungyeol sitting on the bottom of his bed. His hair is cut and black and his eyes are sparkling while looking at Myungsoo.

Myungsoo cries as he hugs Sungyeol, while Sungyeol thanks him.

He can feel Sungyeol’s warmth despite the many layers, in the middle of winter, and that’s what matters most to him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I tried my best to be as close and realistic as possible with the elements I'm working at, and I hope I did. Comments are well appreciated by the author, as always. Stay awesome, everybody!


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